Anne van Kesteren

Opera Mini for the iPhone

Today’s news might make me reconsider my stance on Apple products. I have been slowly moving away from Apple products. Initially because my MacBook went dead and I wanted to wait for a new generation of MacBook Pros (still not here; what the fuck Apple). But then also because they are in the offense with software patents. That is decidedly uncool, whatever way you go about it. On the other hand, hardly anyone seems to be able to compete with them when it comes to really cool hardware. I just tried Opera Mini on my (first generation) iPod Touch and it works really good. The only problem seems to be that rotating does not reformat the layout. Not entirely unexpected as everything is pre-rendered and reloading the page goes fast enough, but it is a minor annoyance. Anyway, go try it out!

Comments

  1. The new MacBook Pro is now in the U.S. store, not checked elsewhere, but at least its on its way.

    Posted by Jonny Barnes at

  2. More Apple-related news.

    Posted by Frans at

  3. Frans said:

    More Apple-related news.

    Its a little distressing how Apple are going about this. Saying that, this control that Apple yields will certainly be beneficial for their iAd service.

    Posted by Jonny Barnes at

  4. I installed it on my second-generation iPod Touch earlier this morning. Second thing I did, after saying good morning to my girlfriend. ;)

    It's unbelievably fast. I can't imagine how I could stand Mobile Safari before. With OMini it's just like having Opera on my desktop again, except it's in my pocket!

    Posted by J. King at

  5. Today’s news might make me reconsider my stance on Apple products.

    Me too, but not for the same reasons. Opera Mini's UI is bad. Very, very bad. Straight-port-from-Android bad if not worse, it's a hack job.

    I can understand why not too much efforts were put in it, Opera probably expected a rejection, but on the other hand it should have been rejected, for the sake of consistency.

    Instead, Apple bent for the sake of politics and PR.

    Not impressed, I hope Opera will now do the right thing and fix the interface, Mini might be fast, but right now on the iPhone it's fast crap.

    Posted by masklinn at

  6. I totally agree with masklinn. Opera mini is a good example why Apple doesn't want applications built with a 3rd-party intermediate framework. It should be easy to fix though. (And don't forget, tapping the top status bar (with the time) should scroll to the top!)

    Posted by Sjoerd Visscher at

  7. I totally agree with masklinn. Opera mini is a good example why Apple doesn't want applications built with a 3rd-party intermediate framework. It should be easy to fix though. (And don't forget, tapping the top status bar (with the time) should scroll to the top!)

    I can confirm that tapping the status bar does scroll the page to the top.

    Posted by Jonny Barnes at

  8. I can confirm that tapping the status bar does scroll the page to the top.

    That is incorrect. Tapping on the title bar (which is apparently fixed to the top, taking up valuable screen estate) scrolls to the top, this is very different and non standard.

    Tapping the status bar does not scroll to top, missing the status bar does that.

    Posted by masklinn at

  9. My bad, I must have missed then. I was wondering why they had that red bar.

    Posted by Jonny Barnes at